Tuesday, September 21, 2004

  • Tuesday, September 21, 2004
  • Elder of Ziyon


by Daniel Pipes, New York Sun*

September 21, 2004

Should law enforcement profile Muslims?

Amnesty International USA answers emphatically no. It asserts in a report issued last week that "law enforcement's use of race, religion, country of origin, or ethnic and religious appearance as a proxy for criminal suspicion" has harmed some 32 million persons in the United States. It even claims that this practice "undermines national security."

Law enforcement, of course, categorically denies any form of profiling. But I agree with Amnesty that profiling takes place. Specifically, it has held terrorist suspects for whom there is no probable cause to arrest by calling them "material witnesses" to a crime.

Consider the case of Abdullah al Kidd, an American convert to Islam was held by American authorities as a material witness for two weeks in early 2003, then released. Asked why he was held, Norm Brown, an FBI supervisor, cited three "red flags":

* Mr. Kidd's having listed on a Web site jihad as an interest; the FBI interpreted this as a reference to a holy war.
* Mr. Kidd's having "sold tapes and books containing the teachings of radical sheikhs" when he lived in Idaho.
* Mr. Kidd's owning a video that "had to do with the hijacking and terrorist events on September. 11, 2001."

But I, a speci­alist on militant Islam, engage on a routine basis in all three of Mr. Kidd's "red-flag" activities. My website discloses a keen interest in jihad; I have personally and institutionally disseminated the teachings of radical sheikhs; and I have assembled an archive of materials about 9/11. As a non-Muslim, however, these activities have (so far) not aroused suspicions.

Clearly, Mr. Kidd was held in part because of his Islamic identity. Nor was he the only Muslim in America whose religion was a factor in his arrest.

*

Ayub Ali Khan and Jaweed Azmath, two Indian Muslims, were men arrested on 9/12 while riding a train and carrying about $5,000 in cash, black hair dye and boxcutters were detained for a year on suspicion of being part of the 9/11 operation. Eventually exonerated and freed, they claimed to have been profiled. This is self-evidently correct: Had the two not been Muslim, the police would have had little interest in them and their boxcutters.
*

Brandon Mayfield: the FBI had fifteen fingerprints that it thought might match the one sent from Spain and connected to the bombings there on March 11, 2004. Of the 15 potential suspects, it zeroed in on the Muslim, namely Mr. Mayfield, perhaps because of his multiple connections to Islamists and jihadists. Mr. Mayfield was released after 16 days in prison, when the fingerprint match proved faulty.
*

Abdallah Higazy: suspected with owning an air-to-ground transceiver found in a hotel across the street from the fallen World Trade Center, he was detained for a month before a pilot claimed the transceiver.

More broadly, Anjana Malhotra notes that of the 57 people detained as material witnesses in connection with terrorism investigations, "All but one of the material witness arrests were of Muslims." In the murky area of pre-empting terrorism, in short, it matters who one is.

So, yes, profiling emphatically does take place. Which is how it should be. The 9/11 commission noted that Islamist terrorism is the "catastrophic threat" facing America and, with the very rarest of exceptions, only Muslims engage in Islamist terrorism. It would therefore be a mistake to devote as much attention to non-Muslims as to Muslims.

Further, Amnesty International ignores that some instances of preemptive jailing have worked. It has foiled terrorism (Mohammed Junaid Babar, Maher Hawash, Zakaria Soubra, James Ujaama) and dealt with other crimes (Mohdar Abdullah, Nabil Almarabh, Omar Bakarbashat, Soliman S. Biheiri, Muhammad Al-Qudhai'een).

Plenty of material witness cases have yet to be decided, such as those of Ismael Selim Elbarasse, Mohamad Kamal Elzahabi, Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, Jose Padilla, Uzair Paracha, and Mohammed Abdullah Warsame, and could lead to convictions.

Amnesty International has laid down the gauntlet, placing a higher priority on civil liberties than on protection from Islamist terrorism. In contrast, I worry more about mega-terrorism – say, a dirty bomb in midtown Manhattan – than an innocent person spending time in jail.

Profiling is emerging as the single-most contentious issue in the current war. Western governmental authorities need to stop hiding behind pious denials and candidly address this issue.
  • Tuesday, September 21, 2004
  • Elder of Ziyon

Interview with Bat Ye'or


Excerpt from FrontPage interview:

FP: Tell us about the Prodi project where Tariq Ramadan and others have collaborated.

Bat Ye'or: Prodi's project is the fulfillment of Eurabia. It is called the "Dialogue between Peoples and Cultures in the Euro-Mediterranean Area."

It was requested by Romano Prodi, the President of the European Commission, and accepted at the Sixth Euro-Mediterranean Conference of Foreign Affairs Ministers in Naples on 2-3 December 2003. It represents a strategy for closer Euro-Arab symbiosis to be implemented by a Foundation that will control, direct and monitor it. Last May the European ministers of foreign affairs accepted the creation of the Anna Lindh Foundation for the Dialogue of Cultures with its seat in Alexandria, Egypt. Swedish Foreign Minister Anna Lindh, murdered by an insane man, was a key advocate of the Palestinian cause and the boycott of Israel. Lindh was known for her criticism of Israeli and American policies of self-defense against terror. EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana was a close friend, calling her a "true European."



The Foundation will endeavor through numerous means to reinforce links of mutuality, solidarity and "togetherness" between the Northern and Southern shores of the Mediterranean, that is, Europe and the Arab countries. The authors of the project carefully avoid such characterizations since -- in the spirit of Edward Said -- they are judged anathema and racist. This is explained in the report's text, but I use them for clarification. It is the Eurabian context, representing a totally anti-American and anti-Zionist culture and policy, that explains the strong reaction against the war in Iraq -- itself integrated into the war against Islamic terrorism. A terrorism that Eurabia has denied, blaming Israel's "injustice and occupation" and America's "arrogance" instead. Eurabia has transformed Islamic terrorism into a cliche: "America is the problem" in order to consolidate the web of alliances that support its whole geostrategy.



FP: What is the significance of Solana's declaration?



Bat Ye'or: Solana is strongly implicated in the EU Arabophile and pro-Palestinian policy conducted intensively under Prodi as a European self-protective reaction to the American war against terror. If one examines the EC/EU declarations since 1977 on the Arab-Israeli conflict, one notices that they espouse Arab League decisions and positions: the 1949 armistice lines imposed on Israel, although never recognized as international boundaries; the creation on those boundaries of a Palestinian state not mentioned by UN resolution 242; the acknowledgement of the PLO as the sole representative of the Palestinian people, and of Arafat as its leader, with the obligation for Israel to negotiate exclusively with him; and initially the refusal of separate peace treaties. The EU adopted all these Arab League requests as well as repeated threats of economic and cultural boycott against Israel, constantly demanded by the Europeans' close Arab allies and their powerful lobby, the Parliamentary Association for Euro-Arab Cooperation. On 3 March 2004, EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, when asked about U.S. proposals to requested democratic reforms in Arab states, declared:



"The peace process always has to be at the center of whatever initiative is in the field. . . ­Any idea about (reform of) nations would have to be in parallel with putting a priority on the resolution of the peace process, otherwise it will be very difficult to have success." (Reuters, "Solana: Mideast peace vital for Arab reforms"; see also Neil MacFarquhar "Arab states start plan of their own Mideast", International Herald Tribune, March 4, 2004.)



Solana just repeated the opinion of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak after his meeting with him. Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa shared this opinion and refused to consider any reforms in Arab countries before the settlement of the Arab-Palestinian conflict¨Da settlement whose overall conditions imply Israel's destruction. Hence, any democratization and change of Arab societies demanded by the West are linked by the Arabs to its participation in Israel's demise. This link was rejected by Senior U.S. State Department official Marc Grossman when visiting Cairo on 2 March 2004. He said that the democracy plan should not depend on a settlement of the Middle East conflict. But Egypt's foreign minister, Ahmed Maher, answered him:



"Egypt's position is that one of the basic obstacles to the reform process is the continuation of Israeli aggression against the Palestinian people and the Arab people."



According to Reuters, Amr Moussa, speaking at the opening session of a regular ministerial meeting, declared:



"The Palestinian cause...is the key to stability or instability in the region, and this issue will continue to influence in all its elements the development of the Arab region until a just solution is reached."



Eurabian notables, whether Chirac, de Villepin, Solana, Prodi, or others, have continuously stressed the centrality of the Palestinian cause for world peace, as if more European vilification of Israel would change anything in the global jihad waged in the US, in Asia, and from Africa to Chechnya the latest horrendous tragedy in Ossetia is but one example. In such a view, Israel's very existence, not this genocidal jihadist drive, is a threat to peace. The Euro-Arab linkage of Arab/Islamic reforms to Israel's stand is spurious and only demonstrates, once more, Europe's subservience to Arab policy. Numerous Arab and Islamic Summits have imposed the centrality of their Palestinian policy on the world and requested that all political problems should be subordinated to it. The EU likewise.
  • Tuesday, September 21, 2004
  • Elder of Ziyon

Aside from the occasional denunciation of the attacks, the murder of 3,000 Americans is often observed in the region's government-controlled TV with statements made by leading professors, religious leaders, government officials, and even Muslim-Americans that are often conspiracy theories stating that Arabs and Muslims were not involved and that the US government or Jews are the true culprits.


Many reasons are given as to why the US government would attack its own country.

Syrian researcher Tayyeb Tizini, interviewed on Iran's al-Alam TV on August 16, claimed that an intifada against globalization had broken out, and that in order to thwart it America attacked itself on 9/11:

'According to American and European documents, including the investigation of President Bush and his aides about 9/11, I'd like to say that 9/11 was an American action. These Americans began to understand that the new order must be marketed by a great event that would create new dangers for the world. 9/11 was for this purpose .'

Former dean of humanities at Egypt's 'Ein Shams University, Mustafa Shak'a was interviewed by Iqra TV on June 16, where he attributed the 9/11 attacks to the US and the Jews:

'To this day, we don't know who attacked the US on September 11. Why is the attack attributed to [Osama] bin Laden although it has not been proven that he was involved in the operation? It is way above his capabilities.

'Those who created him have made him a legend. The operation was 100% American, and this is not the place to elaborate, but what proves the operation was a Jewish one is that five Jews climbed up a high building and filmed the first attack of the first plane .'

At the Al-Shahid Mosque in Khartoum, Sudan on August 27, the imam 'Abd al-Jalil al-Nazir al-Karouri, discussed 9/11 during a Friday sermon that appeared on Sudan state TV:

' Let's say in brief, that whether the events and the destruction of the two famous buildings in the US were carried out by Israel's enemies, as the US claims, or by Israeli agents, as we claim, the outcome is the same: The Jews are the cause. These Jews hasten America's death.

'The US must beware. We offer this advice via the TV channels so they won't wake up when it is too late.'

Another common conspiracy has been to state that al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden are puppets of the US.

Iraqi political analyst Kazem al-Qurayshi spoke on the Iranian channel Sahar1 TV about 9/11 and terrorism on July 18:

'Al-Zarqawi, bin-Laden, and Mullah Omar, and all the leaders of the Salafi movement, are tools created by the British Freemason movement 200 years ago. With these tools they wanted to create a new religion for us, to confront Islam. They filled this new religion with Jewish poison, the Masonic poison. Their religion is manifested by a long beard, a short garment, and killing Muslims."
  • Tuesday, September 21, 2004
  • Elder of Ziyon


Hebrew daily “Yediot Ahronot” reports that Russia has made its first defense procurement from Israel. Aeronautics Defense Systems has signed a contract to sell unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) to Russia's Ministry of Civil Defense, Emergencies, & Natural Disasters.


Yavne-based Aeronautics Defense Systems signed the contract with Russian company Irkut (RTS; MICEX:IRKT), the manufacturer of the advanced fighter-bomber Sukhoi Su-30 and other aerospace products. The contract is reportedly worth several million dollars. Aeronautics Defense Systems VP marketing Idan Shimon confirmed the report.

Russia bought the company's Aerostar UAV, which has also been sold to Angola, Ivory Coast and other African countries. Aerostar is used to defend oil installations and other facilities.

Aeronautics Defense Systems recently achieved another milestone, signing a cooperation agreement for UAVs with General Dynamics Corp. (NYSE:GD). The agreement has already led to one contract: the US Navy has bought several of Aeronautics Defense Systems' products. The Aerostar is manufactured in the US, which Shimon says enables the IDF to use US military aid to buy the system.

In order to expand its share of the UAV market, Aeronautics Defense Systems bought most of the shares of Italian UAV engine-maker Zanzottera Technologies early this year. Zanzottera is now developing more powerful engines for Aeronautics Defense Systems larger UAVs now under development.
  • Tuesday, September 21, 2004
  • Elder of Ziyon

Recent Israeli airstrikes against militants in the West Bank and Gaza Strip have raised Palestinian speculation that it is arming its surveillance drones with missiles for track-and-kill missions.

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'I saw a small plane and then a flash of light, then I heard a huge explosion and a car went up in flames,' said Abdel Karim Abdel of Jenin, recounting how three militants were slain by Israel while driving through the West Bank city on Monday.
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Israel will not say whether its unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, have offensive capabilities. But mounting testimony from the occupied territories as well as foreign reports suggest the country is a leader in this high-tech field of weaponry.
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'The Israelis almost certainly have armed UAV programs on the go right now,' said Robert Hewson, editor of Jane's Air-Launched Weapons.
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'The UAVs offer an ideal 'closed loop': spotting the target and then hitting it from the same platform,' Hewson said.
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The United States already uses an attack drone, the Predator, one of which rocketed a car in Yemen in November 2002, killing six people suspected of being Al Qaeda militants.
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The advantages of using unmanned aerial vehicles for such lightning strikes, analysts say, are obvious. Being propeller-driven and capable of altitudes of up to 3,000 meters, or 10,000 feet, they make none of the giveaway rotor or jet noise of conventional combat aircraft. Lacking pilots who get tired, and with low fuel consumption, unmanned aerial vehicles can cruise for hours, their cameras relaying live images to operators on the ground, which allows an almost instant 'fire' order once a target is spotted.
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The Web site of Northrop Grumman, a U.S. avionics firm, says the company has rigged its Israeli-designed Hunter drone with missiles that are completely silent, coasting out of the sky onto their targets by using glider fins rather than a propulsion system.
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Hewson said Israel had its own UAV-fired munitions, adapted from tank shells and rockets. 'We are positive Israel has developed specific low-collateral guided weapons for these platforms,' he said.
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Israeli officials do not discuss the tactics of their policy of assassinating militant leaders, which has been in force since 2001.
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But they insist that efforts are made to reduce noncombatant casualties."
  • Tuesday, September 21, 2004
  • Elder of Ziyon


Israel Defense Forces troops in Jenin on Tuesday arrested Abdel Rahman Zubeidi, the brother of Tanzim commander Zakariya Zubeidi. According to Palestinian sources reported that the leading militant's brother is not involved in terrorism but was nevertheless arrested by Israel in order to place pressure on Zakariya Zubeidi. Two of Zubeidi's cousins were also arrested.

IDF soldiers arrested 36 wanted Palestinian militants in the West Bank overnight Monday, 13 of them in a predawn arrest raid in the Jenin refugee camp.

In the Jenin-area village of Silat al-Khartiya, Nahal Brigade soldiers arrested a Palestinian woman suspected of planning to assist the two female Palestinian students from Al-Najaf University who intended to carry out a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv.

Palestinians fired four Qassam rockets at Sderot and into an open area in the western Negev region on Tuesday morning. The rockets were launched from the Beit Hanun area of the northern Gaza Strip. There were no casualties and no damage was caused.

A Qassam landed in Sderot on Monday, striking an abandoned structure and evading a radar early warning system designed to warn residents of an impending attack.

Four Israelis were treated for shock, and a number of houses were damaged. Two more rockets hit the western Negev on Monday causing neither damage nor casualties.

Children in Sderot on Monday evening participated in a demonstration demanding the government stop the rocket fire on their community. Sderot, located about a kilometer-and-a-half from the Gaza Strip has been hit hard and two people, including a 4-year-old boy, were killed by rocket fire there in June. Many of the homemade Palestinian rockets have fallen into fields near Sderot, while others have damaged homes and cars.

Three residents of the Palestinian village of Budrus were wounded in clashes with security forces Tuesday morning during a protest against the construction of the West Bank separation barrier.

Five left-wing Israeli activists were also detained for questioning in the village, located north of the Jerusalem-Modi'in road.

Several dozen demonstrators showed up at the village Tuesday morning in order to hinder construction of the barrier which started in the area about a year ago but was halted due to changes in the route.

The demonstrators clashed with Border Police forces, who responded with rubber bullets and tear gas.

Earlier Monday night, IDF soldiers exchanged gunfire with Palestinian militants near the central Gaza Strip settlement of Kfar Darom. No casualties or damage were caused as a result of the incident.

An Israel Air Force helicopter missile strike tore apart a jeep in Gaza City on Monday evening, killing two senior Hamas militants.

The two men, Rabah Zakut and Nabil al-Saidi, were riding in a jeep in the Rimal neighborhood in the city.
  • Tuesday, September 21, 2004
  • Elder of Ziyon

Interior Minister Otto Schily said the controversial West Bank barrier is effective because it has led to a drop in attacks on Israel. He also rejected comparisons between the Israeli fence and the Berlin Wall.


'Those who draw comparisons with the Berlin Wall are wrong, because it does not shut people in and deprive them of their freedom,' Schily told Deutschlandfunk radio on Monday. 'Its purpose is to protect Israel from terrorists.'

German Interior Minister Otto Schily
Schily, who is currently in Israel for an international conference on terrorism, said the security barrier was the result of decades of failed efforts to prevent Palestinian suicide bombers from crossing the border and attacking Israel.

'All the efforts undertaken over many years, even decades, have unfortunately failed to bear fruit,' he said. 'So it is understandable that Israel should try to erect a protective barrier, which furthermore has shown it works, and I think that the criticism is far from the reality.'

In the radio interview, Schily also insisted the security barrier should be referred to as a 'fence' and not a 'wall,' as it is often called in Germany.

Palestinians demand explanations

On Tuesday, Palestinian authorities demanded a thorough explanation for Schily's statements. Cabinet Minister Sajeb Erekat said the German minister's statements were 'very strange and unusual,' and not in keeping with the official German position on the barrier.

A Palestinian couple walks through the fence Israel built to separate Israel and the Palestinian territories, near the city of Qalqilya.
Only recently German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer had criticized the barrier as 'barely understandable' from a security point of view. But a spokesman for the German foreign ministry on Tuesday insisted there was no contradiction between the two ministers' remarks. He said that while the German government recognizes that every state has the right to defend its borders, it is still concerned over the route of the barrier, which at times cuts deep into Palestinian territory."
  • Tuesday, September 21, 2004
  • Elder of Ziyon
BERLIN, Germany (Reuters) -- Berlin
The Berlin state government has banned an Arab-Islamic Congress due to be held in the German capital next month to rally support for 'resistance and intifada' in Iraq and Israel.


Henrike Morgenstern, a spokeswoman for the Berlin interior ministry, said Monday an advertisement for the event published in English on the Internet expressed approval for suicide attacks against Israel and the United States.

'That significantly oversteps the limit of what can be allowed in terms of opinion-forming,' she said.

Interior Minister Otto Schily said last week the government believed the event was a threat to security and public order and he would work with the foreign ministry to try to stop would-be participants entering the country.

At the weekend, police said a Lebanese man who was one of the organizers of the congress had been deported to Beirut.

The conference was announced on the Internet at http://www.anamoqawem.org/berlincall.htm and was scheduled to take place on October 1-3.

On their Web site, the organizers urge Iraqi and Palestinian resistance and advocate 'the liberation of all the occupied territories and countries in (the) struggle against the American-Zionist hegemony and occupation.'

In a letter to Schily, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre -- an international Jewish human rights group -- described the meeting as 'a political platform for radical Jihad and a market for potential European youth recruits to the ranks of terrorism.'"
  • Tuesday, September 21, 2004
  • Elder of Ziyon

U.S. intelligence agencies concluded recently that al Qaeda — fearing its credibility is on the line — is moving ahead with plans for a major, "spectacular" attack, despite disruptions of some operations by recent arrests in Britain and Pakistan.

Officials said recent intelligence assessments of the group, which is blamed for the September 11 attacks, state that an attack is coming and that the danger will remain high until the Nov. 2 elections and last until Inauguration Day on Jan. 20.
"They [al Qaeda] think their credibility is on the line because there hasn't been a major attack since 9/11," said one official familiar with intelligence reports on the group.
A second official said: "There isn't reason to believe that the recent arrests have disrupted their plans."
Authorities in Pakistan and Britain recently arrested key al Qaeda leaders, but the group uses tight "compartmentation" of its operations. The process, used by intelligence services, keeps information about operations within small "cells" of terrorists to protect secrecy.
Thus, details of the possible attack remain murky, but analysts say it is planned to be bigger and deadlier than the September 11 attacks, which killed 3,000 people.
Potential targets include the White House, Pentagon, U.S. Capitol and congressional buildings, as well as landmarks and business centers in New York, the officials said. The officials said that there is no specific information about targets.

Monday, September 20, 2004

  • Monday, September 20, 2004
  • Elder of Ziyon
Duh.:
The United States for the first time named Saudi Arabia yesterday as a country that severely violates religious freedom, potentially subjecting the close U.S. ally to sanctions.

'Freedom of religion does not exist' in Saudi Arabia, the State Department said in its annual report on international religious freedom. 'Freedom of religion is not recognized or protected under the country's laws and basic religious freedoms are denied to all but those who adhere to the state-sanctioned version of Sunni Islam,' the report said, adding that 'non-Muslim worshippers risk arrest, imprisonment, lashing, deportation and sometimes torture.'"
  • Monday, September 20, 2004
  • Elder of Ziyon

How Sharon beat the intifada — and what the United States can learn

By Yossi Klein Halevi & Michael B. Oren
The Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, had planned on offering the usual complaints when he visited Prime Minister Ariel Sharon last week. There was the stalled road map, Israel's security fence, and the recently announced expansion of West Bank settlements close to the Green Line. But, before he arrived in Jerusalem, something happened that changed Lavrov's agenda: the massacre of Russian children by Chechen Islamist terrorists. And so, when he met Sharon on September 6, the main topic of discussion was what advice and assistance Israel could offer Russia in the fight against terrorism.

Ironically, Israel had just buried 16 people — many of them Russian immigrants — after the simultaneous suicide bombings of two buses in the southern city of Beersheba. According to Hamas, those attacks were retaliation for the assassination, five months earlier, of its spiritual and political leaders, Sheik Ahmed Yassin and Abdel Aziz Rantisi. Yet the fact that it took Hamas almost half a year — and dozens of failed attempts — to make good on its threat to inflict immediate and massive punishment proves just how successful Israel's war against terrorism has been.

During those same six months, the Israeli army destroyed most of what remained of Hamas's organization in the West Bank and a substantial part of its infrastructure in Gaza. Just last week, Israeli gunships rocketed a Hamas training camp in Gaza, killing 15 operatives. Hamas leaders, who once routinely led rallies and gave interviews to the media, don't dare show their faces in public anymore. Even their names are kept secret. Hardly a night passes without the arrest of a wanted terrorist. Hamas's ranks have become so depleted that the organization is now recruiting teenagers: At the Gaza border, Israeli forces recently broke up a Hamas cell made up of 16-year-olds.

Meanwhile, life inside Israel has returned to near normalcy. The economy, which was shrinking in 2001, is now growing at around 4 percent per year. Even the tourists are back: Jerusalem's premier King David Hotel, which a few years ago was almost empty, recently reached full occupancy. All summer, Israel seemed to be celebrating itself, with music and film festivals and a nightly crafts fair in Jerusalem that brought crowds back to its once-deserted downtown. Everyone knows a terrorist attack can happen at any time. Still, Israeli society no longer lives in anticipation of an attack. The Beersheba bombing, which once would have seemed to Israelis part of an endless and unwinnable war, is now perceived as an aberration. Terror that no longer paralyzes is no longer terror.

Israel's triumph over the Palestinian attempt to unravel its society is the result of a systematic assault on terrorism that emerged only fitfully over the past four years. The fence, initially opposed by the army and the government, has thwarted terrorist infiltration in those areas where it has been completed. Border towns like Hadera and Afula, which had experienced some of the worst attacks, have been terror-free since the fence was completed in their areas. Targeted assassinations and constant military forays into Palestinian neighborhoods have decimated the terrorists' leadership, and roadblocks have intercepted hundreds of bombs, some concealed in ambulances, children's backpacks, and, most recently, a baby carriage.

At every phase of Israel's counteroffensive, skeptics have worried that attempts to suppress terrorism would only encourage more of it. They warned that Israel couldn't close Orient House, the Palestinian Liberation Organization's de facto capital in East Jerusalem, without provoking an international backlash and strengthening Yasir Arafat's hold there. They warned that, by isolating and humiliating Arafat, Israel would only bolster his stature at home and abroad. They warned that, by reoccupying Palestinian cities and targeting terrorist leaders, Israel would only deepen Palestinian rage and despair.

In fact, Israel shut down Orient House in August 2001 with relative impunity, and today, few even recall where it was. Not only has Arafat been confined to the ruins of his Ramallah headquarters for the last two years, but he has become a near-pariah figure even among many European foreign ministers and the target of a revolt in the territories against his corrupt rule. In late August, German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer visited Jerusalem, but not Arafat's headquarters in Ramallah. And, for all their rage at Israeli assassinations and despair over the reoccupation, growing numbers of Palestinians are now questioning the effectiveness of their terrorist war. Last year, in Gaza's Beit Hanoun, residents protested against terrorists using the village as a base for launching rockets into Israel; just recently, a Palestinian teenager was shot dead there after he tried to bar terrorists from his home.



The price Israel has paid for its victory has been sobering. Arafat may be a pariah, but Israel is becoming one, too. Increasingly, the legitimacy of Jewish sovereignty is under attack. Former French Prime Minister Michel Rocard, for example, has called Israel's creation a "mistake." In Europe, an implicit "red-green-black" coalition of radical leftists, Islamists, and old-fashioned fascists has revived violent anti-Semitism. Along with the desecration of Jewish cemeteries by neo-Nazis and the assaults on Jews by Arab youth, some European left-wingers now sense a sympathetic climate in which to publicly indulge their anti-Semitism. In a recent interview with the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Greek composer and left-wing activist Mikis Theodorakis denounced "the Jews" for their dominance of banks, U.S. foreign policy, and even the world's leading orchestras, adding that the Jews were "at the root of evil." In the Arab world, a culture of denial that repudiates the most basic facts of Jewish history — from the existence of the Jerusalem Temple to the existence of the gas chambers — has become mainstream in intellectual discourse and the media. Government TV stations in Egypt and Syria have produced dramatizations based on The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Boycotts of Israel are multiplying: The nonaligned states recently voted to bar "settlers" — including Israelis who live in Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem — from their borders. Among young Israelis across the political spectrum, there's growing doubt about the country's future and widespread talk of emigration.

In its victories and its defeats, Israel is a test case of what happens to a democracy forced to confront nonstop terrorism. In their daily lives, Israelis must contend with the most pressing questions of the global war against terrorism: Can terrorism be defeated? And, in doing so, can basic democratic principles be maintained? Finally, does the moral necessity to defeat terrorism supersede the moral necessity to address the grievances of those in whose name terrorism is committed?

So far, Israel has answered these questions affirmatively, providing valuable lessons for the United States in its own war on terrorism. Arriving at answers, though, has been a tortuous process. Four years ago this Rosh Hashanah, when the Palestinian leadership launched this war, Israelis were caught by surprise and demoralized by the violent collapse of a peace process whose success many had assumed was imminent. Prime Minister Ehud Barak was not only negotiating under fire, but offering additional concessions. Cabinet ministers and security figures were insisting that the war against terrorism couldn't be won by military means alone. The Israeli army seemed as disoriented as the politicians: When two reservists were lynched and mutilated by a Palestinian mob inside a police station in October 2000, Israel's initial response was to bomb mostly empty buildings belonging to the Palestinian Authority (P.A.). And, when a French TV crew filmed the death of a 12-year-old Palestinian boy, Muhammad Al Dura, killed in crossfire between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian gunmen, Israel apologized even before thoroughly investigating whether it was responsible for Al Dura's death. (James Fallows, in an exhaustively researched article for The Atlantic Monthly, concluded it wasn't, as did the reporting of a German TV station.) Rather than calling the terrorism assault a war, Israelis reflexively adopted the misleading Palestinian term intifada — implying an unarmed civilian uprising against an armed occupation. In fact, this was a war by armed Palestinians aimed mostly at Israeli civilians and launched after Israel had agreed to end the occupation — an anti-intifada.

Meanwhile, European and even American leaders were still passionately courting Arafat. In one particularly degrading episode, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright literally ran after Arafat as he stormed out of cease-fire talks in Paris in October 2000 and begged him to return to the table. Washington didn't even place Hamas and Hezbollah on its list of terrorist organizations until November 2001. Rather, most of the international community held Israel responsible for weakening Arafat and his ability to restrain terrorism. Conventional wisdom insisted that the Fatah movement was different from Hamas and that "political" Hamas was different from "military" Hamas.

This is the disaster Sharon faced when he assumed the premiership in March 2001. To respond effectively, he first had to convince Israelis that negotiating under fire would only encourage terrorism and that a military solution for terrorism did indeed exist. And so, one of Sharon's first acts in office was to meet with the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) general staff and demand a plan for victory. Still, he didn't immediately go to war. The Lebanon fiasco of the early '80s had taught him the danger of initiating a military campaign without the support of both the mainstream left and the U.S. administration. (By contrast, Sharon didn't waste time wooing France and other European Union countries that wouldn't support the war on terrorism no matter what Israel did.) This is the first lesson Sharon could teach democratic leaders facing a war against terrorism: Insure domestic consensus and the support of vital allies.

Sharon imposed on himself a regimen of single-mindedness and patience. He concentrated almost exclusively on security, leaving the country's economy and its foreign relations — with the exception of relations with the Bush administration — to other ministers. Nor did he allow himself to be distracted by divisive domestic issues like the secular-religious divide. By becoming the first Likud leader to endorse a Palestinian state, Sharon broke with his own party's ideology and recast himself as a consensus politician. And he established a national unity government with the Labor Party. He acted liked the leader of a nation at war, not a party at war.



Sharon's first major test came in June 2001, with the suicide bombing of Tel Aviv's Dolphinarium discotheque, in which 22 young people were killed. His own constituency demanded that he retaliate by reoccupying West Bank cities, but Sharon refused to launch a counteroffensive until the Labor Party agreed. Though denounced by the right as a defeatist, Sharon's restraint was the first step toward effectively combating terrorism.

Meanwhile, Sharon was gradually escalating. He increased the number of targeted killings, further erasing the distinction between "political" and "military" terrorists. And he began the process of isolating and delegitimizing Arafat, curtailing the Palestinian leader's movements. Unlike Barak, Sharon held Arafat personally responsible for terrorism.

One way terrorism succeeds is by obscuring its tracks, allowing its patrons to evade retribution. Initially at least, Arafat conducted the war by remote control, not only maintaining the fiction of a division between Hamas and Fatah but even of a division within Fatah itself, between a supposedly moderate mainstream and dissident groups like the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, which were funded by the P.A. Sharon's effort to expose Arafat's ruse culminated in January 2002 with Israel's seizure of a P.A. arms ship, the Karine A, loaded with C-4 explosives likely intended for bomb belts. That was the moment Israel exposed Arafat's equivalent of WMD.

The Karine A incident substantially strengthened the emerging Bush-Sharon alliance — an alliance that was by no means assured, not even after September 11. Indeed, Bush's initial reaction to the Al Qaeda attacks was to draw a distinction between terrorism against Israelis and terrorism against Americans. And he seemed intent on excluding Israel from his international coalition as his father had done in the Gulf war. When Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld visited the Middle East shortly after September 11, he skipped Israel. Sharon responded with deft brinksmanship. Even as he publicly warned Bush against appeasing the Arabs at Israel's expense, he acceded to Bush's demand that Israel refrain from exiling Arafat.

Sharon's policy was vindicated in March 2002, the bloodiest month in the war, with 133 Israelis killed. Now, even the mainstream Israeli left was finally convinced that Palestinian terrorism wasn't aimed at Israel's policies but its existence. For Israelis, the war on terrorism had become a war of ein breira, no choice, no different from 1948 and 1967. The response to the call-up of reserve soldiers for Operation Defensive Shield — the reoccupation of the West Bank — was over 100 percent; reservists who hadn't been called volunteered to serve.

Though Israelis would continue to disagree about how to solve the Palestinian problem, they now agreed with Sharon that Israel must not try to solve that problem until terrorism was defeated. Even Shimon Peres appeared on CNN to defend the counteroffensive. Here was another lesson Israelis had finally internalized: Addressing terrorists' grievances before terrorism is defeated only encourages terrorism and makes those grievances harder to resolve.

No country has been subjected to more relentless terrorism than Israel; nor has any country been subjected to greater scrutiny or vilification. Though the terrorist war was launched by the official Palestinian leadership — and polls have consistently shown a Palestinian majority in support of suicide attacks — Israel considers itself at war with only the perpetrators of terrorism, not with the Palestinian people. Israel has not resorted to the indiscriminate bombings, mass expulsions, blockades of food and fuel that modern states have frequently adopted in wartime. Despite intense fighting, no city in the West Bank or Gaza remotely resembles Dresden in 1945, Hanoi in 1972, or Grozny today. In contrast to Palestinian terrorists, whose goal is to kill the maximum number of Israeli civilians, Israeli soldiers have risked their lives to minimize civilian Palestinian casualties, searching out terrorists in house-to-house fighting rather than calling in artillery. According to the International Policy Institute for Counterterrorism, an Israeli think tank, over half of Palestinians killed in the last four years have been combatants, while nearly three-quarters of Israelis killed have been civilians. Yet another lesson Israel offers the world is that one can defeat terrorists without annihilating the society that hosts them. Though abuses against civilians have occurred — over 600 are now being investigated by the IDF and many more have obviously gone unreported — Israel proves that a war against terrorism can be fought while preserving basic democratic principles. Still, much of the world has branded Sharon a war criminal. In waging war against terrorists, then, especially those who enlist children and pregnant women, one must be prepared to endure some measure of international censure and isolation.



For all its hard-won achievements, Israel's victory is hardly guaranteed. A key component of winning the war on terrorism is convincing the Palestinians that terrorism doesn't pay. That goal will fail if the Israeli Supreme Court, overriding the army's objections, succeeds in placing the security fence along the pre-1967 border. Given that the future border may well be determined by the fence, such an outcome would grant the Palestinians territorial gains through terrorism beyond what they were offered at the negotiating table — and without even recognizing Israel's existence in return.

Israel could also lose if Byzantine domestic politics prevent the emergence of a national unity government capable of implementing decisions, such as unilateral withdrawal from Gaza, that are backed by the Israeli majority. Failure to withdraw from Gaza could provoke widespread refusal to serve in the army and strain Sharon's hard-won rapport with Bush. Conversely, failure to demonstrate that the withdrawal is supported by a majority of Israelis could encourage settlers to resist violently. Sharon, after all, lost a Likud Party referendum on withdrawal. To neutralize his right-wing opponents, he needs to hold a national referendum or new elections to establish beyond doubt that he has a solid mandate to withdraw. Otherwise, the war that began with Palestinians shooting at Israelis could end with Israelis shooting at Israelis.

Americans would be wise to study this final lesson, too: Perhaps the greatest danger in fighting terrorism is the polarizing effect such a campaign can have — not just internationally, but domestically. To avoid this pitfall, a strong political consensus for military action is necessary. That means the president must actively reach out to domestic opposition. But American leaders must also heed Sharon's other lessons. That means an ability to endure criticism from abroad and even to risk international isolation, a willingness to define the war on terrorism as a total war, and a commitment to focus one's political agenda on winning, not on divisive or extraneous concerns. Fulfilling those conditions does not guarantee success. But it does make success possible — as Israel is, at great cost, showing the world.

Sunday, September 19, 2004

  • Sunday, September 19, 2004
  • Elder of Ziyon


Since the beginning of 2001, 23 Palestinians, all holders of Israeli identity cards due to the family reunification program, were arrested by security forces for their involvement in terror attacks inside Israel, including three suicide bomb attacks which resulted in the deaths of 16 Israelis,
according to information released yesterday by security officials.

Palestinian holders of Israeli identity cards, acquired if one of their parents is an Israeli citizen, have become prized recruits for terror organizations.

Their ability to travel inside Israel unrestricted and their familiarity with Israeli culture and Hebrew are used by the terror organizations in the West Bank to compile information, transport attackers, and transfer weapons and bombs in preparation for attacks.

Shadi Tubasi, who was recruited by Hamas in Jenin, blew up at the Matza restaurant in Haifa on March 31, 2002, killing 15 Israelis. Tubasi was granted Israeli citizenship as her mother is from the Nazareth region.

Muhammad Matsri was recruited by the Islamic Jihad to place a car bomb outside of an army base in Israel, but was arrested by security forces in March 2003 before carrying out the attack. Matsri's father is an Israeli Arab and his mother is from Kalkilya.

Muhammad Mahajneh, a resident of Jenin, was arrested in May 2003 while transporting Majed Tsabah toward Hadera where he was to have launched a shooting attack. Mahajneh has Israeli citizenship because his family lived in the Arab Israeli city of Umm el-Fahm. He was working for Hamas.

Samer Atrash, who lived in the Shuafat refugee camp, was arrested after he drove a suicide bomber to the French Hill neighborhood of Jerusalem, where the latter blew up on Egged bus No. 6 and killed seven Israelis in May 2003.

Murad Ala'an was recruited by Hamas to launch a suicide attack at the Filter cafe in Jerusalem, where he worked as a chef. Ala'an, originally from the Al-Aida refugee camp near Bethlehem, was the holder of an Israeli identity card because his mother lives in east Jerusalem.

During his investigation, Murad admitted that there were a number of Palestinians, all Israeli identity-card holders in the framework of the family unification program, who had been recruited by terrorist organizations.

Another example is the Hamas cell in Jerusalem that was responsible for the suicide bombings at the Hebrew University and at Cafe Moment in Jerusalem. The cell also planned to launch attacks and blow up trains and gas tankers.

Muhammad Oudeh, of east Jerusalem, placed the bomb in the Hebrew University cafeteria. Sami Abassi, also of east Jerusalem, worked in the Holon area and compiled information on access routes to be used by suicide bombers."

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